Johan

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Came expecting nice talk about snacking not trauma dumping. I'm only really interested in reading about this kind of stuff either when I know the person, I find the person interesting or the stuff they're talking about sounds interesting. As rude as this is going to sound, there is nothing terribly out there to her story: teenage girl snacks a lot, puts weight, feels self concious, has low self esteem, developes ED that eventually kind of learns to get under controll in her 20's/30's. And the ending of the book kind of had nothing to do about snacking? It is true that a big reason why she fought often with E. was her picky-ness with food, but fundamentally, that relationship wasn't a healty one, she herself mentioned fighting with him all the time. Good for her getting out of that toxic dynamic tho.

Also, the art is totally not my style, I'm not really a fan of these "unpolished" cartoons.

La prosa deja mucho que desear la verdad. Es casi puro explicar ("tell") en lugar de describir ("show") y muchísima repetición de líneas ("se sorbió los mocos"). El primer libro se me hizo un poco más interesante porque era un mundo nuevo, estas conociendo a los personajes, aprendiendo todas estas clases nuevas y sus poderes, y ese interés como que soporta un pelín el peso de la prosa. Pero en este segundo libro si que la sentí mucho más, para mal.

También sentí que la trama era inexistente. El primer libro es algo así como "un sistema como de videojuego aparece de la nada y la gente tiene que ver como adaptarse y sobrevivir" pero el segundo no tiene una trama clara. Si me dices, va de enfrentarte a una mazmorra, eso sucede como a la mitad del libro ¿luego que? Si me dices, va de ver como sobrevivir a la amenaza de una dragona que se acerca a la ciudad, de nuevo, eso sucede más o menos a partir de la segunda mitad, no es algo que el lector tenga presente, aparece un poco de la nada. Convendría tener un poco más claro cual se pretende que sea la trama antes de sentarse a escribir para entretejer los puntos principales desde el principio de poquito en poquito, y también entre si, de manera que no se sienta como dos eventos sin conexión.

Otra cosita, la muerte de Estefanía se sintió super forzada, especialmente considerando su clase. Justo antes de su muerte la pones a decir de la nada que cuide a los chavales por si se muere y va y se muere. Se siente incluso más forzado considerando que Pepe sobrevivió a la muerte dos veces aunque anteriormente se dio a entender que necesitaba de alguien que moviera al parasito de un cuerpo a otro. Pero las dos veces que murió estaba solo y logró moverse de un cuerpo a otro sin problema. Hay que tener un poco más de consistencia.

También me hizo ruido el que Sade estuviera tan triste/molesta por la muerte de Estefanía pese a que se conocieron... ¿ese mismo día? ¿hace unas dos horas a lo mucho? No tiene sentido.

En fin, hay muchas cosas que me dejaron decepcionado con el libro, especialmente porque es de los pocos LitRPG en español que conozco. Y si, el LitRPG no se caracteriza por tener los libros mejor escritos del mundo, pero igual esperaba un poquito de mejoría comparado con el primer libro. Convendría dejar marinar un poco la historia, trabajar con lectores beta o un editor (si no se hace ya). Le doy dos estrellas porque el final final con la revelación de las mejoras de sistema me picó el interés otra vez, me recordó un poco a Sword Art Online y tengo que decir que suena divertido así de primeras. Veremos si logra captar mi interés un poco más que este segundo.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

I honestly wasn't expecting to like this manga that much. I gotta say I'm not a fan of the art style, so when I started reading I got a bit predisposed to not enjoy the manga that much, but when I met Uno and Kobayashi, learned about their struggles and their ways to overcome their hardships and how their friendship developed... my heart just melted. I found myself giggling and kicking my feet several times throughout every chapter!

While Uno isn't officially diagnosed with anything so far he comes across VERY heavily as an autistic teenager, and while I'm not autistic myself I find his portrayal a pretty accurate representation so far.

If you're in need of a feel-good manga that isn't completely fluff and doesn't focus on romance but on friendship you need to read this one for sure. You won't regret it. I'm eager to continue the next volume already!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

While I found the art absolutely breath-taking and the story quite interesting for the most part, there's a couple of things that left me (more than) disappointed, enough to make me give this manga only two stars.

First of all, the most relevant to the average reader I guess: there just isn't enough information about the historical and political landscape. Yes, perhaps I should have thought twice before picking an historical drama set on a place and time period I know nothing about, but I still would expect a bit more information (infodump if you want) about it, to sort of "catch up" with it. As it is, the story is interesting and you can sort of follow what happens and the "characters" but it gets a bit tiring because of russian naming conventions and titles.

Second: While probably accurate to how royalty behave, the reveal at the end of the manga was frankly disappointing, boring, it just fell flat and made me think "they had to suffer all of that just for this reason?" It just wasn't very satisfying on a narrative plane.

Lastly, and my biggest complain: What's up with calling this an erotic manga when the only "erotic" content is compromised of multiple rape scenes of a character that is a minor for the most part??? That's just fucked up in so many ways I can't even process what went through the mind of the author and the publishing house for them to greenlight this as erotic?? And then they had the gall to go and make the girl that was raped forgive her rapist?? (And it was even sort of implied that she liked him?? Insane)

I say grab this manga only if you have previous knowledge about the historical and political landscape and are okay with rape apologist narratives because this one sure reek of it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

This one Is going to my list of extremely cute feel-good romances to read for when I feel sad!

The art was pretty good and while it wasn't really out there it had a different enough vibe compared to a vast majority of BL's one tend to find out there (you know the type, one is a giant, the other Is super tiny, one is the manliest man to ever man, the other is the most femenine man in existence, the GIGANTIC hands, etc., etc.)

I especially enjoyed how real the characters felt. Their dialogue flowed in such a natural way that I actually felt for one second that the author had usted dialogue from their real life, just like in the manga (manga-ception? Lol) Yaotome motivations felt realistic despite being a bit out there and exagerated for the sake of creating romance, the pace of their relationships (as teacher-student, friends and later as lovers) was just right imo. Even "the third act break-up" was resolved in a very mature way that actually made me feel like they are grown-ass adults instead of "adults" with the personality of teenagers at best.

If I had to point one gripe it would be that, as much as I enjoyed the characters talking through the misunderstanding, It would have been nice to have a little bit more of tension or some kind of problem to wrap up the story in a slightly more satisfying way, but like I said, the manga exudes feel-good vibes, so I can't complain to much hahaha.